I propose to take Questions Nos. 285, 286, 287 and 288 together.
The Carbon Fund was established by the Carbon Fund Act 2007 to record carbon credit transactions related to Ireland’s adoption of emission targets under the Kyoto Protocols. The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) was appointed to manage the Fund and, as the designated purchasing agent on behalf of the State, it administers and manages the carbon credit transactions.
During the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocols (2008-2012) the total number of credits obtained by the State was just over 9 million. 5.26 million credits were acquired through direct purchases from the market at a cost of €89.6 million. The remaining credits were obtained through investments of just over €26.5 million net in multilateral funds. The requirement for carbon credits in the first commitment period amounted to 3.05 million. The remaining 6 million credits were available for use for the second commitment period (2013-2020).
During the second compliance period (2013-2020) of the Kyoto Protocol, Ireland met most of its commitments through the EU Effort Sharing Decision (ESD) framework that covered the same period. This framework was largely based around meeting annual emission limits for Member States, also known as annual emission allocations (AEAs) but provided other compliance options.
For compliance under ESD, Ireland used both certified credits and the purchase surplus AEAs from other Member States. During the period 2019 – 2021, the NTMA purchased almost 2.95 million certified credits at a cost of €2.1 million. As AEAs may only be obtained directly from other EU Member States, my Department, following Government approval, entered negotiations to purchase of AEAs. Ireland entered a bilateral agreement with Slovakia to obtain 4.15 million AEA units at a cost of €2.9 million for retrospective compliance.
The ESD framework placed certain restrictions on the types of carbon credits that could be applied by Member States. This resulted in Ireland being unable to use 702,000 of its previously purchased carbon credits. The fund has been dormant since 2022 with no assets other than 702,000 unusable carbon credits with a nil value. With the cancellation of these unusable credits in April 2025, the nominal assets have now been eliminated, and the Carbon Fund is effectively dormant.
I would direct the Deputy to recent PQs on the current approach to managing the costs of compliance associated with the Effort Sharing Regulation. There is currently no budgeted expenditure for purchasing credits.
The NTMA is required to prepare an annual report to me, as Minister, on the activities of the Fund, and to prepare annual financial statements. These statements can be found on their website www.ntma.ie/publications.
